The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications - Origins

Origins

By the 1950s, most evangelical scientists scorned flood geology, and those who accepted the theory were increasingly marginalized within the American Scientific Affiliation (founded 1941), an evangelical organization that gradually shifted from strict creationism to progressive creationism and theistic evolution. In 1954, Bernard Ramm, an evangelical apologist and theologian closely associated with the ASA, published The Christian View of Science and Scripture, which attacked the notion that "biblical inspiration implied that the Bible was a reliable source of scientific data." Ramm ridiculed both flood geology and the gap theory, and one ASA member credited Ramm with providing a way for a majority of Christian biologists to accept evolution.

Ramm's book sparked a young Bible teacher and seminarian, John C. Whitcomb, Jr., to challenge what he considered its "absurdities." Whitcomb had earlier studied geology and paleontology at Princeton University, but by the 1950s, he was teaching Bible at Grace Theological Seminary. At the 1953 ASA meeting, Whitcomb had been impressed by a presentation of Henry M. Morris—a hydraulic engineer with a PhD from the University of Minnesota—called "The Biblical Evidence for Recent Creation and Universal Deluge." Following publication of Ramm's book, Whitcomb decided to devote his ThD dissertation to defending flood geology.

Berated almost from the beginning of his project by influential evangelicals such as Edward John Carnell, the newly installed president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Whitcomb completed his dissertation in 1957 and began condensing it for publication. With no illusions about his scientific expertise, Whitcomb sought a collaborator who had a PhD in science. He could find no geologists who took Genesis seriously, and even teachers at evangelical schools at best expressed distaste for flood geology. Eventually Henry Morris agreed to be Whitcomb's collaborator for the scientific portions of the book. Despite his heavy teaching load and administrative duties at Virginia Tech, where he had just become head of a large civil-engineering program, Morris made steady progress on his section of the book, eventually contributing more than twice as much material as Whitcomb.

As the manuscript neared completion, Moody Press, which had expressed initial interest, now hesitated. The proposed book was a long work, insisting on six literal days of creation, certain to be criticized by segments of Moody's constituency. Whitcomb and Morris instead published with the small Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, whose owner Charles H. Craig had long wanted to acquire a manuscript that supported catastrophism.